Side by side : Three TBWC Highlanders

Heading up into the Highlands for this side by side, the biggest 'whisky region' in Scotland, three drams bottled by That Boutique-y Whisky Company.

These three all featured in the TBWC 12 Days of Christmas Advent Calendar - lets see how they compare:

That Boutique-y Whisky Company is an independent bottler owned by Atom Brands who also own Master of Malt. Founded in 2012, TBWC buys casks from distilleries all over the world, matures and bottles them. Each has a unique hand drawn label telling the story of the whisky.

Dram	Tomatin 11yo (Batch 4)	Clynelish 21yo (Batch 7)	Ben Nevis 21yo (Batch 8)
Characteristics	51% ABV, Non-coloured, NCF	47.6% ABV, Non-coloured, NCF	48.9% ABV, Non-coloured, NCF
Bottling notes	TBWC haven't updated their website in a while and I can't find this one for sale - maybe it hasn't been released yet? Previous releases have been at 47.4% and aged 16 or 21yo. This one is younger and stronger.	Batch 7 is a release of 1,174 bottles. Nose: Strong scents of banana foam sweets, followed up by creamy piña colada. A good whiff of savoury oak sits underneath it all. Palate: Not quite as sweet as the nose, with notes of almond, marzipan and a burst of crisp green apple. Finish: A short finish, with bitter orange softened by gentle vanilla.	Batch 8 is a release of 931 bottles. Nose: Thick, luscious toffee at first, followed by stewed fruits, caramelised pecans and candied peels. It’s enjoyably chocolatey throughout, with some savoury notes of salted rye crackers to balance the sweetness. Palate: There are more rich, unctuous sweet notes from dark fruit jam, salted caramel and buttery biscuit. A flash of tropical fruit sharpness and a pinch of cumin providing some heat and complexity. Finish: Dense malt and dark chocolate.
My thoughts:
Appearance
	Pale gold in the glass, swirls cling to the glass, beading up before falling as slow thick legs.	Pale gold in the glass, again swirls cling and bead up before falling as slow thick legs.	Dark gold / light bronze in the glass, swirls bead up and hang like an inverted crown before falling as well space thick legs.
Nose	Wholemeal bread, a little stewed pear and some vanilla - it's not quick at coming out. After a little while in the glass swirls reveal a  little milk chocolate and some smoke hints.	Stewed orchard fruit - apples, pears and apricots, some oak and a little peppery spice. Hints of honey and banana are offered after a little time in the glass.	Strawberry toffo sweets, dried fruit, milk chocolate and some citrus notes. Some time reveals musty bookshop notes with a little spice.
Palate	Thin slightly oily arrival, instantly drying the ABV hints at burning but there isn't any. The bread and pear notes from the nose mingle with milk chocolate and malty notes on the tongue. There's an oaky note here too with some herbal hints. Not overly inspiring.	Another thin oily arrival but much sweeter this time, loads of orchard fruit and maybe a hint of some tropical notes - pineapple and mango. This one is putting the moisture back after the Tomatin - would make a lovely summer BBQ dram. A few more sips offer a little citrus and a spicy peppery bite. Nice!	Again thin on the arrival, no oiliness though - this is more berries and spice. The strawberries from the nose are there along with raspberries and blackberries. This one is also drying, the oloroso cask offering dark chocolate and icing sugar helping with to suck away the moisture. The spice is oaky with a ginger hint.
Finish	A slightly sour citrus note but it's mainly the oaky dryness that lingers with this one.	Fruit led with a drying unexpected drying note. There's a little citrus here too - not overly long.	Milk chocolate covered berries with a ginger spice lingers - very nice.
Overall	You'd think 21 years in an Oloroso cask would have turned the Ben Nevis into a sherry bomb but it hasn't - either a finish, a second fill or the Ben Nevis spirit has tamed the cask and held on to give fruit notes. It's the best of the bunch here. I've never really got the appeal of Clynelish and although this was nice there was nothing to lift it to the superstar status that some suggest. The Tomatin wasn't inspiring - the only good one of these I've had was a distillery bottling of their Cask Strength offering - that was very good.

Many thanks to @DrinksByTheDram for the samples!


Geeky bit:

Label Stories Emily Chappell creates all the amazing labels for the Boutique-y bottles - each has its own unique story!
We've bottled a Tomatin single malt! We bet you won't ever be able to figure out the reason behind what we've put on the label, which looks a bit like what you might see on a tin of tomatoes! Yes, the connection is so tenuous you'll never guess why the Tomatin label looks sort of like a tinned tomatoes label.	The history of the Clynelish distillery is a little bit confusing. It was founded in 1819, and cheerfully produced its whisky until the 1960s, when another distillery was built right next to it. This new distillery was also called Clynelish. The first distillery’s name was changed to Brora, and its style was changed too (they started using heavily peated malt). The 'new' Clynelish continued to produce whisky as Clynelish from then on, with Brora eventually closing in the 1980s, and now some of the Brora distillery is used as a visitor centre and warehouse for Clynelish. Yeah, you might need to read that twice to get fully up to speed. Our Clynelish label features cats that can talk like them cats from the internet pictures of cats that can’t spell. Have you heard about the internet? It’s good.	We’ve all done it. We’ve all impressed our friends by saying “I'm going to climb Ben Nevis!” and then actually just gone and had a look at the Ben Nevis distillery, which sits right beside the mountain. Interesting to note that back in the 1800s, Ben Nevis was actually two distilleries which eventually merged into one in the early twentieth century. >Now, if you take a look at the label of our Ben Nevis, you’ll see a chap atop Ben Nevis (mountain), looking at Ben Nevis (distillery), drinking Ben Nevis (whisky) and holding Ben Nevis (bottle), which features the scene again on its label. It’s like one of those eternal loop thought experiments, or like that picture that could be a duck or a rabbit. Kind of.